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Going Deep-Deep POV by Wendy Sparrow

I have completely lost track of time (probably due to the chaos of the flood) and I don’t have a sponsor post for you today. So instead I’m reblogging a fantastic post by my pal Wendy Sparrow on deep POV. This is one of the best checklists for signs of too shallow perspective where you can work on going deeper into your character’s head, whether you’re in first or third person.

~*~

I know. That’s a weird title. It was “Deep is Painful” but I couldn’t find an appropriate picture that wasn’t also creepy. It might be slightly creepy with this painting actually…

Anyway, so this is another revision week. If you missed last week’s post on cutting words–that’s what I’m doing still and you should go check that out and commiserate. Cutting Words.

Today, I’m working on a novella that has been through multiple revisions so it’s been streamlined down, but therein lies a new quandary: words needing to be added. It’s not descriptions–I got those in–though, that is something I add after a first draft. (My first drafts are typically 90% dialogue.) It’s my deep third person point-of-view that I’m addressing.

Now, let me be flat-out honest…I’m not a pro at third deep. I first started making a conscious effort to write in third deep a year and a half ago. I’m a newb. So, I’m going to tell you how I’m screwing up and how I’m fixing it. If you find it interesting then awesome.

In the other post, I mentioned words indicating I’m not going deep enough, but I’ll add them here too:

There are a few words like “thought” which tip me off to shallow POV.

thought

believed

felt

saw

heard

noticed

hoped

knew (though this is clearly only in certain scenarios)

wondered

considered

reminded

remembered

smelled

When I’m using these words for my POV character instead of just stating things flat-out, I’ve gone shallow. But swapping words out or cutting them is just step number one.